Behind Eric Cantor’s campaign meltdown

ASHLAND, Va. — From the moment polls opened Tuesday, it could not have been clearer that Eric Cantor gave no mind to the idea he could lose.

In the morning, he huddled with lobbyists at a Starbucks on Capitol Hill. In the afternoon, a campaign aide in Richmond emailed Cantor allies in Washington to report that Election Day plans were going swimmingly. The Cantor campaign organized volunteers to meet at the Republican National Committee to travel to the district for a get-out-the-vote effort that was billed as a way to “build up your resume campaign credentials,” with the added perk of getting a chance to “meet the majority leader” and celebrate at his “victory party,” which would feature a bar and catering stations.

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And in the evening, Steve Stombres, Cantor’s longtime chief of staff who is also a local politician in Northern Virginia, attended a Fairfax City Council meeting, where wastewater treatment and public employee retirement plans were on the docket.

Within hours, Cantor’s political career came to a crashing end, as a crowd of dejected supporters, draining beer and wine from the bar, watched in disbelief while Cantor gave his concession speech.

The failure of one of the most powerful politicians in the country to recognize a threat from a college professor and political neophyte contributed to Cantor’s stunning loss on Tuesday. But interviews with dozens of Cantor’s current and former staffers, veteran GOP strategists, outside groups and constituents portray a campaign that was bedeviled from the start by Cantor’s preoccupation with reaching the pinnacle of House leadership. He was tending more to a constituency on Capitol Hill and his monied supporters, voters said, than to the actual constituents in Virginia’s 7th District, which is in and around Richmond.

An examination of the campaign also found that Dave Brat was viewed as more of a nuisance than a threat, someone who could be swatted away in a barrage of TV ads and mailings. In example after example, Cantor failed to adhere to campaign basics such as assuaging advocacy groups in the district and mollifying tea partyers. While alarm bells should have been going off, the congressman was reassured by his pollster, whose final internal showed him winning with around 62 percent.

“This is the difficulty of trying to be a national leader,” said former Virginia Rep. Tom Davis, once chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, who served alongside Cantor. “It’s the inherent conflict … Instead of going back to his district every weekend, he was out around the country helping other people. That takes its toll after a while. All of a sudden he becomes ‘part of the problem.’”

A few weeks out from the election, the Virginia Citizens Defense League, a gun rights group, pressed Cantor’s campaign to perform what they saw as a routine request: reaffirm his support for the Second Amendment by completing a simple questionnaire. It was the kind of request any typical Republican running in a conservative district would answer.

But Cantor ignored the group, which claims 26,000 supporters, as he had for years. The congressman never responded to the survey or its plea to relocate an annual GOP event in the district from a pavilion that banned concealed guns.

The Defense League responded by making robocalls to Republican voters throughout the district questioning his commitment to the right to bear arms, a staple issue for many GOP voters here.

The slight, his critics argued, was emblematic of Cantor’s broader attitude that he was untouchable.

“We were tired of being treated like mushrooms,” said Philip Van Cleave, the group’s president, who lives in the district. “His chickens came home to roost.” Cantor’s camp viewed the league as a fringe organization; the majority leader was endorsed by the NRA.

Meanwhile, Cantor became an ideological mystery, current and former aides said, allowing an opening for Brat to say the congressman had strayed from the Republican Party. Cantor was constantly repositioning himself: from immigration reform opponent, to staunch supporter, to opponent once again; from the combative conservative voice at the leadership table, to a walled-off leader, concentrating only on broadly popular issues; from Speaker John Boehner’s foe to his best friend.

Politically, Cantor was under pressure to change his views and approach. As Cantor became more prominent, and more of a target for Democrats like President Barack Obama, his internal polling showed his popularity in the district sinking.

Meanwhile, Cantor’s ambitions increasingly kept him in Washington and away from the district, associates said. The 51-year-old Republican was heir apparent to Boehner — and had a travel schedule and entourage to match — but those trappings of power backfired.

Virginia GOP Chairman Pat Mullins, a Cantor constituent who has known him for years, said Cantor “just wasn’t in the district as much as he used to be. Dave Brat was there.”

His loss was broad based, but the heart of the resistance to Cantor was here in Hanover County, north of Richmond, which includes the Randolph-Macon College where Brat teaches and there is a deep vein of frustration with the direction of the country. The majority leader lost each of its 37 precincts, pulling just one-third of the vote in the county — worse than his performance anywhere else.

“I’m really glad he did,” said Steve Travis, 64, a retired Richmond police officer who was shopping at the Green Top sporting goods store. “It’s time for some new blood, somebody besides the ole Republicans and Democrats.”

A sign off the turnpike in nearby Mechanicsville calls Cantor “The Lying King,” with a picture of a squished lion, a harsh parody of the movie.

Several people mentioned the ever-present Capitol Police detail that ferried Cantor and made him feel insulated.

“The protective force around him didn’t want him coming into some of these [rural] areas,” said Mullins, who lives in the district.